4. Natural Productions. — The most remarkable fea- ture, says Ainsworth, in the vegetation of Taurus, is the abundance of trees, shrubs, and plants in the north- ern, and their comparative absence in the southern dis- trict. Besides the productions above enumerated, Kurdistan yields gall-nuts, gum Arabic, niastich, man-
< na (used as sugar), madder, castor-oil, and various kinds of grain, pulse, and fruit. An old traveller, I Rauwolf, who passed by Mosul in 1574, dwells with admiration on tho finely-cultivated fields on the Ti- gris, so fruitful in corn, wine, and honey as to remind him of the Assyrian Kabshakeh's description of his native countiy in 2 Kings xviii, 32. Eich informs us that a great quantity of honey, of the finest quality, is produced ; the bees (cemp. Isa. vii, 18, "the bee in the land of Assyria") are kept in hives of mud. The naphtha springs on the east of the Tigris are less productive than those in Mesopotamia, but thejr are j much more numerous. The zoology of the mountain I district includes bears (black and brown), panthers, i lynxes, wolves, foxes, marmots, dormice, fallow and red deer, roebucks, antelopes, etc., and likewise goats, ! but not (as was once supposed) of the Angora breed. In the plains are found lions, tigers, hyenas, beavers, jerboas, wild boars, camels, etc. — Kitto.
5. Subdivisions and Principal Towns. — Assyria in Scripture is commonly spoken of in its entirety, and unless the Huzzab (2Si"t) of Nahum (ii, 7) is an equiva- lent for the Adiabene of the geographers, no name of a district can be said to be mentioned. The classical geographers, on the contrary, divided Assyria into a number of regions — Strabo (xvi, 1 and 4) into Atvria, Arh, ■■litis, Artacrne, Apolloniatis, Chtt/onitis, Dolomene, Calachene, Adiabene, Mesopotamia, etc.; rtolemy (vi, 1) into Arrapachitis, Adiabene, the Garamaan coun- try, Apolloniatis, A rbelitis, the countrj- of the Sambatts, Calacine, and Sittacene. These provinces appear to be chiefly named from cities, as Arbelitis from Arbela; Calcine (or Calachene) from Calah or Halah (Gen. x, 11); Apolloniatis from Apollonia; Sittacene from Sit- tace, etc. Adiabene, however, the richest region of all, derived its appellation from the Zab (Diab) rivers on which it lav, as Anmiianus Marcellinus informs us
ASSYRIA
489
ASSYRIA
(xxiii, 20). Ptolemy (v, 18) made Mesopotamia (which he understood literally as the whole country between the Euphrates and the Tigris) distinct from Assyria, just as the sacred writers distinguish " Aram-Naha- rain" from " Asshur." Strabo (xvi, 1) extended As- syria to the Euphratss, and even across it into Arabia and Syria! Farthest north lay the province Arra- pachitis, so called, as Rosenmiiller conjectures, from Arphaxad, Asshur's brother (Gen. x. 22-24 ; but see Vater on Genesis, i, 151). South of it was Ccdacine, by Strabo written Calachene ; perhaps the Chalach of 2 Kings xvii, 6; xviii, 11. Next came Adiabene, so important a district of Assyria as sometimes to give name to the whole country. See Adiabene. In Aramaean it is called Chadyab or Hadyab. North-east of it lay Arbelitis, in which was Arbcla (now Arbil, of which see an account in Rich's Kurdistan, ii, 14 ; and Appendix, No. i and ii), famous for the battle in which Alexander triumphed over Darius. South of this lay the two provinces of Apolloniatis and Sittacene. The country of Kir, to which the Ass.yrians transported the Damascene Syrians (2 Kings xvi, 9 ; Amos i, 5), was probably the region about the river Kur (the Cyrus of the Greeks), i. e. Iberia and Georgia.
The chief cities of Assyria in the time of its great- ness appear to be the following: Nineveh, which is marked by the mounds opposite Mosul (Nebbi-Yunus and Kouyunjik) ; Calah or Halah, now Nimrud ; As- shur, now Kaleh Sherghat ; Sargina, or Dur-Sargina, now Khorsabad; Arbela, still Arbil; Opis, at the junc- tion of the Diyaleh with the Tigris ; and Sittace, a little farther down the latter river, if this place should not rather be reckoned to Babylonia. (Sec the Journal of the Georjraph. Soc. vol, ix, part i, p. 35, Lond. 1830.) The capital of the whole country was Nineveh, the Ninos of the Greeks (Herodot. i, 102), the Hebrew name being supposed to denote "the abode of Ninus," the founder of the empire. Its site is believed to have been on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite the mod- ern town of Mosul, where there is now a small town called Nebbi Yunus (i. e. the prophet Jonah), the ruins around which were explored by Rich, and are described in his work on Kurdistan. See Nineveh. In Gen. x, 11, 12, three other cities are mentioned along with Nineveh, viz. Rechoboth Ir, i. e. the city of Rehoboth, the locality of which is unknown. Calack (in our ver- sion Calah), either a place in the province of Cala- chene above mentioned, or the modern Hulwan, called by the Syrians Chalach; and Resen, "a great city be- tween Nineveh and Calach," which Bochart identities with the Larissa of Xenophon (Anabasis, iii, 47), and Michaelis with a place called Ressin (Rish-Ain, caput fontis?), destroyed by the Arabs A.D. 772. Rich notices an old place and convent of that name near Mosul (ii, 81). At the town of Al-Kosh, north of Mosul, tradition places the birth and burial of the prophet Nahum, and the Jews resort thither in pil- grimage to his tomb. But, though he is styled an El- koshite (Nah. i, 1), his denunciation against Assyria and Nineveh were evidently uttered in Palestine ; and St. Jerome fixes his birthplace at Helkesei, a village in Galilee. — Kitto ; Smith. See Jonah.